‘Parliament throws 45,000 meals in the bin while 70,000 London kids go hungry’ – Labour MP
Published time: 18 Dec, 2015 13:13
Parliament wasted 45,000 meals last year as tens of thousands of children go hungry across London, an MP has said.
New
figures that reveal the staggering amount of food waste in the British
parliament have prompted calls for MPs to donate their unused meals to
those in need.
Shadow Commons Leader Chris Bryant called on the government to give uneaten meals to local food banks in the capital.
“Last
year 1.2 million sausages were sent to landfill in Rhondda Cynon Taf
alone, which is why it is great that the local council is now signing
everybody up to proper food recycling,” the Welsh Labour MP said.
“But new figures show that this House last year wasted 45,000 meals that were just tipped in the bin.
“With
33 Trussell Trust food banks within the M25 and an estimated 70,000
children in London going to bed hungry each night, would it not be time
for the leader to institute a new scheme to donate unused food from this
palace to local London food banks?”
Monday, December 7th, 2015 | Posted by WorldTribune
Russia accuses U.S. of cover-up over ISIL-Turkey oil smuggling
Special to WorldTribune.com
The
United States is involved in a “cover-up” over Turkey’s alleged
smuggling of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) oil, Russia’s
defense ministry said on Dec. 5.
“When U.S. officials say they
don’t see how the terrorists’ oil is smuggled to Turkey… it smells badly
of a desire to cover up these acts,” the ministry said in a statement
on its Facebook page.
An oil convoy was destroyed when it was hit by a Russian air strike in Syria. /Twitter
ISIL’s
sales of captured oil assets on the black market is credited with
making it the best-funded terror organization in history.
“The
declarations of the Pentagon and the State Department seem like a
theater of the absurd,” the statement said, adding that Washington
should “watch the videos taken by its (own) drones which have recently
been three times as numerous over the Turkey-Syria border and above the
oil zones.”
Speaking at a United Nations “climate” summit in Paris, Obama blamed America for alleged man-made global warming and claimed that the nation embraces its responsibility to “do something” about the alleged problem. That “something,” of course, at least in the administration's view, involves redistributing the wealth of embattled U.S. taxpayers to Third World governments and dictatorships for climate reparations, as well as shackling the American economy with draconian controls to reduce emissions of what serious scientists know as the “gas of life.” Sounding like a wannabe messiah, Obama even claimed that “we finally determined we would save our planet.” However, lawmakers in Congress and the American people have made clear that they neither believe in the increasingly discredited anthropogenic global-warming (AGW) theory nor in the alleged solutions to the supposed problem.
Dictators and other heads of state have typically arrived at UN conferences toward the end of the show. This time, however, hoping desperately to secure a global “climate” agreement where past summits have failed, UN organizers decided Obama and other “world leaders” should show up at the start. Obama complied, spewing gargantuan amounts of CO2 and arriving in Paris to deliver various speeches hyping the AGW theory, along with illegal pledges to hand out your money. “I've come here personally, as the leader of the world's largest economy and the second-largest emitter, to say that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it,” Obama claimed at the ongoing conference, which featured some 150 dictators and heads of government and state.
Of course, Obama is not the “leader” of the “world's largest economy.” His job description is to serve as the chief executive of the federal government, to faithfully execute the laws, and to uphold and defend the Constitution. His other claims were even more ludicrous. For instance, the notion that America recognizes its alleged role in creating the alleged problem could not be more wrong. According to a Pew survey released last year, just 40 percent of Americans even believe the increasingly discredited AGW theory. And without a doubt, far less than that would agree that the nation should shackle its economy and redistribute its wealth to Third World regimes under the guise of dealing with a problem that the overwhelming majority of Americans do not even believe exists.
Obama blames America for non-existent global warming
Barack Obama speaks at U.N. climate summit.
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
While speaking at the United Nations on Tuesday, President Obama blamed the United States for global warming, even though there has been no global warming for nearly 18 years. While the administration insists global warming is a real threat, one professor issued a paper saying there has been no global warming for 19 years.
"But there should be no question that the United States of America is stepping up to the plate," Obama said. "We recognize our role in creating this problem; we embrace our responsibility to combat it. We will do our part, and we will help developing nations do theirs. But we can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every nation –- developed and developing alike. Nobody gets a pass."
Obama hyped action the United States has taken, touting moves taken against power companies in what has been described as a "war on coal." According to the president, the United States has reduced its total "carbon pollution" by more than any other nation.
Carolyn is a staff writer for Science and is the editor of the In Brief section.
..........
It’s getting hot in here. A dispute between the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) over a climate change paper published this summer is escalating. The latest salvos include a second letter from Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX) to NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan seeking internal communications and documents authored by NOAA employees and a letter from the American Meteorological Society condemning Smith’s demands and warning about its implications for all federally funded research.
The quarrel began with a paper by NOAA scientists published 5 June in Science that revised historical atmosphere and ocean temperature data records found to have been poorly calibrated. In 2013 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had noted that the temperature data seemed to suggest that global warming had slowed down beginning around 1998. But the Science paper showed that apparent slowdown in global warming vanished when the data were corrected to account for various sources of bias.
That paper immediately caught Smith’s attention, triggering multiple committee requests for data and methodologies related to the study. NOAA told the committee that the findings were already publicly available and met twice with committee staff to brief them on the results.
But that response didn’t satisfy Smith. On 13 October, he subpoenaed all of NOAA’s internal emails related to the paper, asking for the information by 27 October. In response, the committee’s Democrats wrote to Smith on 23 October, noting that the subpoena “appears to be furthering a fishing expedition” and saying that it oversteps the committee’s bounds, as the paper is a research study and not a policy decision. House Republican leadership this year had given Smith the authority to issue subpoenas without the consent of the minority party.
Did Federal Agency Commit Climate Fraud? Sure Looks Like It
10/28/2015 06:30 PM ET
Junk Science: Worried about climate fraud, Congress is investigating a federal agency for allegedly manipulating weather data to show recent global warming when there is none. So why is the agency refusing to cooperate?
First, a little background: Satellite temperature readings clearly show no warming trend for the last 18 years, 8 months and counting. None.
This fact is significant for two reasons: One, satellite temperature readings are the most comprehensive and thus the most accurate. And, two, the pause in warming since 1998 undercuts the entire global warming agenda of the environmental movement and its allies on the left who see in climate change an opportunity to impose greater government control over our lives.
Yes, we're skeptical of "climate change," at least as defined by the green extremists. Climate is always changing. No one denies that. What's at issue is how it's changing and why. The science is still unclear.
Earlier this year, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists took part in a study that found — no surprise — that the "pause" in global warming from 1998 to 2013 didn't exist.
Their change didn't come from actual temperature readings. It came from extensive data manipulation and tinkering. Instead of a pause, they found a surge.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is refusing to hand over its climate scientists' emails to Rep. Lamar Smith.
See more at http://www.newsy.com/
Russia's and Turkey's objectives in fighting the Islamic State group are diametrically opposed.
It's absolutely impossible to understand why the Turkish government would engage in the suicidal strategy of downing a Russian Su-24 over Syrian territory - technically a NATO declaration of war on Russia - without putting in context the Turkish power play in northern Syria.
President Vladmir Putin said the downing of the Russian fighter jet was a "stab in the back." So let's see how facts on the ground allowed it to happen.
Ankara uses, finances, and weaponizes a basket case of extremist outfits across northern Syria, and needs by all means to keep supply line corridors from southern Turkey open for them; after all they need to conquer Aleppo, which would open the way for Ankara's Holy Grail: regime change in Damascus.
At the same time Ankara is terrified of the YPG - the Syrian Kurd People's Protection Units - a sister organization of the leftist PKK. These must be contained at all costs.
So the Islamic State group - against which the United Nations has declared war - is a mere detail in the overall Ankara strategy, which is essentially to fight, contain or even bomb Kurds; support all manner of Takfiris and Salafi-jihadis, including the Islamic State group; and get regime change in Damascus.
Unsurprisingly, the YPG Syrian Kurds are vastly demonized in Turkey, accused of at least trying to ethnic cleanse Arab and Turkmen villages in northern Syria. Yet, what the Syrian Kurds are attempting - and to Ankara's alarm, somewhat supported by the U.S. - is to link what are for the moment three patches of Kurdish land in northern Syria.
A look at an imperfect Turkish map at least reveals how two of these patches of land (in yellow) are already linked, to the northeast. To accomplish that, the Syrian Kurds, helped by the PKK, defeated The Islamic State group in Kobani and environs. To get to the third patch of land, they need to get to Afryn. Yet on the way (in blue) there is a collection of Turkmen villages north of Aleppo.
The strategic importance of these Turkmen lands cannot be emphasized enough. It's exactly in this area, reaching as much as 35 km inland, that Ankara wants to install its so-called "safe zone," which will be in fact a no-fly zone, in Syrian territory, ostensibly to house Syrian refugees, and with everything paid by the EU, which has already unblocked 3 billion euros, starting Jan. 1, via the European Commission (EC).
The now insurmountable obstacle for Turkey to get its no-fly zone is, predictably, Russia.
David L. PhillipsDirector of the Program on Peace-building and Rights, Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights
Posted: Updated:
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK
INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Research Paper: ISIS-Turkey Links
By David L. Phillips
Introduction
Is Turkey collaborating with the Islamic State (ISIS)? Allegations range from military cooperation and weapons transfers to logistical support, financial assistance, and the provision of medical services. It is also alleged that Turkey turned a blind eye to ISIS attacks against Kobani.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu strongly deny complicity with ISIS. Erdogan visited the Council on Foreign Relations on September 22, 2014. He criticized "smear campaigns [and] attempts to distort perception about us." Erdogan decried, "A systematic attack on Turkey's international reputation, "complaining that "Turkey has been subject to very unjust and ill-intentioned news items from media organizations." Erdogan posited: "My request from our friends in the United States is to make your assessment about Turkey by basing your information on objective sources."
Columbia University's Program on Peace-building and Rights assigned a team of researchers in the United States, Europe, and Turkey to examine Turkish and international media, assessing the credibility of allegations. This report draws on a variety of international sources -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, BBC, Sky News, as well as Turkish sources, CNN Turk, Hurriyet Daily News, Taraf, Cumhuriyet, and Radikal among others.
Allegations
Turkey Provides Military Equipment to ISIS
• An ISIS commander told The Washington Post on August 12, 2014: "Most of the fighters who joined us in the beginning of the war came via Turkey, and so did our equipment and supplies."
• Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, head of the Republican People's Party (CHP), produced a statement from the Adana Office of the Prosecutor on October 14, 2014 maintaining that Turkey supplied weapons to terror groups. He also produced interview transcripts from truck drivers who delivered weapons to the groups. According to Kiliçdaroglu, the Turkish government claims the trucks were for humanitarian aid to the Turkmen, but the Turkmen said no humanitarian aid was delivered.
• According to CHP Vice President Bulent Tezcan, three trucks were stopped in Adana for inspection on January 19, 2014. The trucks were loaded with weapons in Esenboga Airport in Ankara. The drivers drove the trucks to the border, where a MIT agent was supposed to take over and drive the trucks to Syria to deliver materials to ISIS and groups in Syria. This happened many times. When the trucks were stopped, MIT agents tried to keep the inspectors from looking inside the crates. The inspectors found rockets, arms, and ammunitions.
• Cumhuriyet reports that Fuat Avni, a preeminent Twitter user who reported on the December 17th corruption probe, that audio tapes confirm that Turkey provided financial and military aid to terrorist groups associated with Al Qaeda on October 12, 2014. On the tapes, Erdogan pressured the Turkish Armed Forces to go to war with Syria. Erdogan demanded that Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkey's National Intelligence Agency (MIT), come up with a justification for attacking Syria.
• Hakan Fidan told Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Yasar Guler, a senior defense official, and Feridun Sinirlioglu, a senior foreign affairs official: "If need be, I'll send 4 men into Syria. I'll formulate a reason to go to war by shooting 8 rockets into Turkey; I'll have them attack the Tomb of Suleiman Shah."
• Documents surfaced on September 19th, 2014 showing that the Saudi Emir Bender Bin Sultan financed the transportation of arms to ISIS through Turkey. A flight leaving Germany dropped off arms in the Etimesgut airport in Turkey, which was then split into three containers, two of which were given to ISIS and one to Gaza.
Turkey Provided Transport and Logistical Assistance to ISIS Fighters
• According to Radikal on June 13, 2014, Interior Minister Muammar Guler signed a directive: "According to our regional gains, we will help al-Nusra militants against the branch of PKK terrorist organization, the PYD, within our borders...Hatay is a strategic location for the mujahideen crossing from within our borders to Syria. Logistical support for Islamist groups will be increased, and their training, hospital care, and safe passage will mostly take place in Hatay...MIT and the Religious Affairs Directorate will coordinate the placement of fighters in public accommodations."
• The Daily Mail reported on August 25, 2014 that many foreign militants joined ISIS in Syria and Iraq after traveling through Turkey, but Turkey did not try to stop them. This article describes how foreign militants, especially from the UK, go to Syria and Iraq through the Turkish border. They call the border the "Gateway to Jihad." Turkish army soldiers either turn a blind eye and let them pass, or the jihadists pay the border guards as little as $10 to facilitate their crossing.
• Britain's Sky News obtained documents showing that the Turkish government has stamped passports of foreign militants seeking to cross the Turkey border into Syria to join ISIS.
• The BBC interviewed villagers, who claim that buses travel at night, carrying jihadists to fight Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq, not the Syrian Armed Forces.
• A senior Egyptian official indicated on October 9, 2014 that Turkish intelligence is passing satellite imagery and other data to ISIS.
The shooting down of the Russian Su-24 bomber was a planned attack and a trap set by the Turkish Air Force, Dr. Mark Galeotti, the Professor of Global Affairs at the New York University, told Radio Sputnik.
"What it in fact seems to be, as many are saying, it was more of an ambush than anything else," Galeotti told Sputnik.
By downing the Russian plane, Turkey had two things in mind. First of all, Ankara wants to assert itself as a powerful regional actor, especially considering Russia's active participation in Syria. The Turkish government thought that by shooting down its plane Turkey would make Russia take Ankara more seriously in the future.
Secondly, the Turkish government wanted to protect its allies, whom Russia's currently bombing in Syria, Galeotti, an expert in Russo-Turkish relations, explained.
Turkey intends to protect ISIL, as it has direct financial interests involved in the delivery of oil extracted from ISIL-controlled territories. Various estimates place oil revenues generated by ISIL somewhere between $40 and $50 million a month. A day prior to the downing of the Su-24, Russian airstrikes destroyed over 1,000 semi-truck tankers carrying crude oil to ISIL refineries, a large oil storage facility and an oil refinery in Syria.
Syrian Turkmen commander who 'killed' Russian pilot turns out to be Turkish ultranationalist
A Syrian rebel commander who boasted of killing a Russian pilot after Turkey downed Russian jet on Tuesday appeared to be Turkish ultranationalist and a son of former mayor in one of Turkish provinces.
Alparslan Celik, deputy commander of a Syrian Turkmen brigade turned out to be the son of a mayor of a Keban municipality in Turkey’s Elazig province.
He also turned out to be the member of The Grey Wolves ultranationalist group, members of which have carried out scores of political murders since 1970s.
In the space of a few hours, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan went from running scared to defiant belligerence over the shooting down of the Russian fighter jet. It would appear that someone had a stiff word in his ear.
Tough-talking Turkish President? No. More like somebody’s message boy.
When the news first broke on Tuesday that Turkish F-16s had downed a Russian Su-24 bomber near the Syrian border, the Erdogan government in Ankara immediately called for an emergency NATO summit.
Ankara rushed to explain that it was the party that had incurred an act of aggression from Russia. Erdogan was running scared because the facts were such that it was the Turks who had actually carried out an act of aggression against Russia, not the other way around.
And they knew it.
Suspiciously, Ankara did not contact Moscow about the incident, which would have seemed a normal thing to do in the aftermath of a serious incident in which a Russian aircrew was forced to eject and one of the pilots was subsequently killed.
Recall that Turkey claimed that it did not know the identity of the Russian warplane as it allegedly approached Turkish airspace. So if, as it turned out, the Turks shot down a Russian jet in a rapid encounter of uncertainty about its “national security”, then why didn’t Ankara make subsequent attempts to resolve the matter with the Russians as an urgent matter when the circumstances soon became clear? That would have been the expected behavior if the incident was simply an unfortunate, unforeseen confrontation.
Again, the inference is that Ankara knew full well that it was committing a sinister deed.
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Ireland, he is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV.
847 shotguns seized in Italy en route from Turkey to Belgium
A large cargo of shotguns without transportation permits has been seized by the Italian police at the Port of Trieste. The 847 Turkish-made Winchester shotguns worth about €500,000 were on their way to Belgium.
The weapons were declared along with other cargoes destined for Germany and the Netherlands on a Dutch-registered truck driven by a Turkish citizen. Gun shipments from Turkey are nothing new in Trieste, but this time the shipment was missing a key document: authorization for transportation in the EU.
The shipment consisted of 847 pump-action Winchester shotguns: 781 SXP 12-51 and 66
SXP 12-47 models, La Stampa reports.
The Haddad I departed from the Turkish port of Iskenderun and was heading to the Libyan city of Misrata. After intelligence services informed the Greek coastal guards about the ship’s cargo of guns, the vessel was intercepted south of Crete by the Open Sea Coast Patrol.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) speaks during a press conference following talks with French President Francois Hollande (L) in the Kremlin, Moscow, Russia, 26 November 2015.
Published 09:14 November 27, 2015
Updated 09:14 November 27, 2015
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he expected from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to simply apologise, but the latest ruled out such a move
President Vladimir Putin said that Russia had given prior information to the United States of the flight path of the Su-24 downed by the Turkish Air Force on the Syrian border. The US leads the anti-Daesh coalition, in which Turkey is member.
“The American side, which leads the coalition that Turkey belongs to, knew about the location and time of our planes’ flights, and we were hit exactly there and at that time,” Putin said at a joint press conference with French counterpart Francois Hollande in the Kremlin. ”Why did we give this information to the Americans if they did not pass it along to the rest of the coalition?
The
re-enserfment of Western peoples is taking place on several levels. One
about which I have been writing for more than a decade comes from the
offshoring of jobs. Americans, for example, have a shrinking
participation in the production of the goods and services that are
marketed to them.
On
another level we are experiencing the financialization of the Western
economy about which Michael Hudson is the leading expert (Killing The Host).
Financialization is the process of removing any public presence in the
economy and converting the economic surplus into interest payments
to the financial sector.
These two
developments deprive people of economic prospects. A third development
deprives them of political rights. The Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic
Partnerships eliminate political sovereignty and turn governance
over to global corporations.
These
so called "trade partnerships" have nothing to do with trade. These
agreements negotiated in secrecy grant immunity to corporations from the
laws of the countries in which they do business. This is achieved
by declaring any interference by existing and prospective laws and
regulations on corporate profits as restraints on trade for which
corporations can sue and fine "sovereign"
governments. For example, the
ban in France and other counries on GMO products would be negated by the
Trans-Atlantic Partnership. Democracy is simply replaced by corporate
rule.I have been meaning to write about this at length. However, others,
such as Chris Hedges, are doing a good job of explaining the power grab that eliminates representative government.
The American Dream Is Becoming A Nightmare And Life As We Know It Is About To Change
By Michael Snyder, on September 24th, 2015
One
of the biggest steps toward a one world government that we have ever
seen is happening this week, and yet barely anyone is even talking about
it. In fact, it is even being called a “new universal Agenda” for
humanity. Those are not my words – those are the words that the United
Nations is using. If you don’t believe this, just go look at the official document
for this new UN agenda. You won’t have to read very far. The phrase
“new universal Agenda” is right near the end of the preamble.
Officially, the name of this ambitious new program is “the 2030 Agenda“,
and it is being hyped as a way to get the whole world to work together
to make life better for all of us. And a lot of the goals of this new
agenda are very admirable. For example, who wouldn’t want to end global
poverty? But as you look deeper into what the UN is trying to do, you
find some very disturbing things.
If you didn’t like Agenda 21,
then you really are not going to like the 2030 Agenda, because the 2030
Agenda takes things to an entirely new level. Agenda 21 was primarily
focused on climate change and the environment, but the 2030 Agenda goes
far beyond that. As I have noted previously,
the 2030 Agenda addresses economics, agriculture, education, gender
equality, healthcare and a whole host of other issues. It has been
argued that there are very few forms of human activity that do not fall
under the goals of the 2030 Agenda in one way or another.
The UN
says that this new Agenda is “voluntary”, and yet virtually every single
nation on the entire planet is willingly signing up for it. In the
official document that all of these nations are agreeing to, there are
17 sustainable development goals and 169 very specific sustainable
development targets. You can read them for yourself right here.
The
resistance will take the form of subverting the signifiers of wealth
that exemplify the few who have benefited so greatly while everyone else
lost ground.
It's time to trade in your Jag, Mercedes, BMW (and maybe your Prius, Volvo, Lexus, etc.) before the Days of Rage start. As I've explained before ( As the "Prosperity" Tide Recedes, the Ugly Reality of Wealth Inequality Is Exposed),
the rage of the masses who have been losing ground while the Financier
Oligarchs, the New Nobility and the technocrat class reap immense gains
for decades has been suppressed by the dream that they too could join
the Upper Caste.
But once the realistic odds of that happening (low) sink in, the Days of Rage will begin. For those still who don't know the facts of rising inequality, here's what you need to know.
The top 1% skim 23% of all income:
While
the top 5% has enjoyed substantial income gains over the past 45 years,
adjusted for inflation, the bottom 90% have lost ground:
The last time there was mass unrest in America was the civil rights/Vietnam War era. The power of the civil rights movement arose from the core injustice of segregation (separate and unequal)
and institutionalized racism/bias. This institutionalized injustice
drew people from all classes and ethnicities into the streets, where
they were promptly beaten by police.
New
report finds that the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
poses a threat to state regulations against hazardous pesticides,
products, and fracking chemicals
by Sarah Lazare, staff writer
Fracking wells in McKenzie County, North Dakota. (Photo: Tim Evanson/flickr/cc)
The
mammoth Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) under
secret negotiation between the United States and European Union is
poised to slash the power of local governments to regulate toxins—from
pesticides to fracking chemicals—the Center for International
Environmental Law (CIEL) warned in a report released Tuesday.
Preempting
the Public Interest: How TTIP Will Limit US States’ Public Health and
Environmental Protections (pdf) is based on an analysis of the European
Commission's proposed chapter on regulatory cooperation from the April
20 round of negotiations. The report follows other analyses of the text
which conclude that the TTIP poses a threat to human rights,
environmental protections, and democracy on both sides of the Atlantic.
Beyond
the regulatory cooperation chapter, little else is known about the
content of the closed-door negotiations over what is set to be the
largest bilateral "trade" deal in history.
The chapter's contents,
warns CIEL, highlight the direct threat the TTIP poses to public health
and environmental protections on the U.S. state level. This is
especially troublesome, the report argues, because federal regulations
under the Toxic Substance Control Act have proven "egregiously
ineffective"—and could be even further eroded, thanks to the influence
of the chemical industry in Congress.
"The bottom line is if
you're trying to make the U.S. compatible with an international
standard, and you have minimal federal regulations on the U.S. side, and
you have states that go beyond that, the provisions will be used to
attack state chemical and pesticide regulations." —Sharon Treat, report co-author
In
contrast, some state governments have taken the lead in responding to
the dangers posed by fracking chemicals, pesticides, and hazardous
products by adopting "more than 250 laws and regulations protecting
humans and the environment from exposure to toxic chemicals," the report
says.
However, so-called "harmonization provisions" in the EU's
proposal could force states to conform to the lowest common
denominator—in this case weaker federal guidelines. As Sharon Treat,
attorney, co-author of the report and former Maine state legislator,
explained to Common Dreams, "The bottom line is if you're trying to make
the U.S. compatible with an international standard, and you have
minimal federal regulations on the U.S. side, and you have states that
go beyond that, the provisions will be used to attack state chemical and
pesticide regulations."
What's more, the report asserts, the
proposed chapter calls for an imposition of "multiple procedural
mandates—from an early warning system to regulatory exchanges to the
trade and cost-benefit impact assessments—that will lead to a regulatory
chill caused by delay, increased costs for government, fear of legal
challenges, and heightened industry influence and conflicts of
interest."
Beyond their demobilizing effect, such requirements
could also expand the power of private interests in corporate tribunals,
known as the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) systems.
"If
you are requiring state and federal governments to do more studies to
review whether a regulation could be done in a way that is less of an
imposition on trade or big business, then you could bolster the case of
the ISDS systems to block regulations," explained Treat. "That would be
tipping the scales even further in favor of international corporations
running roughshod over regulations and procedures to protect public
health and the environment.
Given the continued secrecy of the
talks, it is not known how the U.S. responded to the proposed chapter,
but the researchers at CIEL say the EU's language alone is cause for
alarm. CIEL warns that the "largest chemical and manufacturing
corporations on both sides of the Atlantic" are playing a role in
pressing the TTIP's regulatory agenda—and that the U.S. is likely
pressing for a similar race to the bottom for EU member states.
Meanwhile,
the Obama administration is negotiating the TTIP alongside two other
secret trade deals: the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Trade in
Services Agreement. All three have come under stiff opposition from
social movements and civil societies across the globe concerned that
they will bolster corporate power at the expense of people and the
planet. Some observers argue that these deals could collapse, in part
due to their unpopularity and internal contradictions.
.................................................................................................................. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Russia
and China have just signed what is being called "the gas deal of the
century", and the two countries are discussing moving away from the U.S.
dollar and using their own currencies to trade with one another. This
has huge implications for the future of the U.S. economy, but the
mainstream media in the United States is being strangely quiet about all
of this. For example, I searched CNN's website to see if I could find
something about this gas deal between Russia and China and I did not
find anything. But I did find links to "top stories" entitled "Celebs
who went faux red" and "Adorable kid tugs on Obama's ear". Is it any wonder why the mainstream media is dying?
If a particular story does not fit their agenda, they will simply
ignore it. But the truth is that this new agreement between Russia and
China is huge. It could end up fundamentally changing the global
financial system, and not in a way that would be beneficial for the
United States.
Russia and China had been negotiating this natural
gas deal for ten years, and now it is finally done. Russia is the
largest exporter of natural gas on the entire planet, and China is
poised to become the world's largest economy in just a few years. This
new $400 billion agreement means that these two superpowers could
potentially enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship for the next 30 years...
Russia reached a $400 billion deal to supply natural gas to China through a new pipeline over 30 years, a milestone in relations between the world’s largest energy producer and the biggest consumer.
President
Vladimir Putin is turning to China to bolster Russia’s economy as
relations sour with the U.S. and European Union because of the crisis in
Ukraine. Today’s accord, signed after more than a decade of talks, will
allow state-run gas producer OAO Gazprom (GAZP) to invest $55 billion
developing giant gas fields in eastern Siberia and building the
pipeline, Putin said.
It’s an “epochal event,” Putin said in
Shanghai after the contract was signed. Both countries are satisfied
with the price, he said.
Of course countries sell oil
and natural gas to each other all the time. But what makes this deal
such a potential problem for the U.S. is the fact that Russia and China
are working on cutting the U.S. dollar out of the entire equation. Just
check out the following excerpt from a recent article in a Russian news source...
Russia and China are planning to increase the volume of direct payments in mutual trade in their national currencies,
according to a joint statement on a new stage of comprehensive
partnership and strategic cooperation signed during high-level talks in
Shanghai on Tuesday.
“The sides intend to take new steps to
increase the level and expansion of spheres of Russian-Chinese practical
cooperation, in particular to establish close cooperation in the
financial sphere, including an increase in direct payments in the Russian and Chinese national currencies in trade, investments and loan services,” the statement said.
In my recent article entitled "De-Dollarization: Russia Is On The Verge Of Dealing A Massive Blow To The Petrodollar",
I warned about what could happen if the petrodollar monopoly ends. In
the United States, our current standard of living is extremely dependent
on the rest of the world continuing to use our currency to trade with
one another. If Russia starts selling natural gas to China without the
U.S. dollar being involved, that would be a monumental blow to the
petrodollar. And if other nations started following the lead of Russia
and China, that could result in an avalanche from which the petrodollar
may never recover.
And it isn't just the national governments of
Russia and China that are discussing moving away from the U.S. dollar.
For example, the second largest bank in Russia just signed a deal with
the Bank of China "to pay each other in domestic currencies"...
teleSURtv
By Michael Snyder, on September 24th, 2015
By Michael Snyder, on May 21st, 2014
